Protests, Parents, and Prayers

At one point, I saw graffiti scrawled across a concrete construction barrier: “Seventy years after the Holocaust, once again they’re forcing Jews into trains.”

This was so ludicrous that I had to laugh… or maybe cry. The light rail is a municipal project, one of many projects aiming to adapt an ancient city built for horses and wagons to the needs of a modern metropolis. No one is forcing anyone onto a train. There are no Nazis or death camps involved here.

Are there complaints and concerns? Yes, some people are concerned about new rail lines bringing secular passengers into staunchly religious areas.

Beneath the passion, as Rav Ahron Lopiansky once explained in these pages (Issue 844), is a matter of identity. The protests were largely conducted by people whose entire identity stems from their self-perception as targets of persecution. They spend their entire lives fighting, because if they’re not fighting, they don’t know who they are. If there are no actual Nazis threatening them, they’ll hurl the term at their local law enforcement — some of whom are third-generation survivors just as they are.